Doctor Who_ Christmas on a Rational Planet - Lawrence Miles [24]
‘I did what I had to!’
‘What you had to?’ The words rolled out of his mouth in the same way that thunder rolls across the savannah, and Roz instinctively found herself looking up at the rainclouds.
‘Do you know what it’s like to be trapped like this?’ she demanded. ‘Stranded, for weeks on end, months on end, left in the middle of some dead-end no-hope planet with no way of getting away from it, and no way of even knowing if you’re going to be spending the rest of your life there?’
‘I have a place in mind,’ the Doctor muttered.
‘A planet where you fit in so badly that they take one look at you and decide you’re either a criminal or part of a freak-show?’
‘I have a place in mind,’ he repeated.
Roz ignored him. ‘Listen, I’ve been through this kind of shit before, but this place is different. Do you know what it is that kills you? It’s not the way they look at you, or the abuse you get, or the bastards who want to know if you’ve ever eaten anyone. If I thought everybody hated me, I could live with it.
I’m used to that by now.
‘I’ll tell you what it is. It’s the not knowing. I don’t know how I’m supposed to act here, and neither do they. They can’t even decide whether I’m human or not. Some of them treat me like an animal. Some of them think I’m some kind of exotic mystery. Some of them, Goddess help them, actually talk to me. This place doesn’t have any rules, and I used to be a cop, I can’t live without rules. I’ve seen slaves dragged half-naked through the streets by their chains, I’ve seen black servants dressed in suits like they were pets, I’ve even met a few free Africans out in the slums They wouldn’t speak to me. They thought I was an Englishman’s whore.’
She practically shouted the last word into his ear, and it was enough to stop even him.
‘It’s the not knowing. Not knowing whether the next person I meet’s going to feel sorry for me, or just try to kill me. And by now, I can’t remember which is supposed to be worse.
OK?’
There was an embarrassed silence.
‘I’m sorry,’ the Doctor finally announced.
‘I have to get out of this place.’
‘I understand.’
‘I did what I had to.’
He opened his mouth to reply, then thought better of it, and just pointed with his walking-cane. Up ahead, Roz could see the trees thin out, the ground dipping into a steep slope, leading down to a low glade. ‘There’s a lot of truth in what you said,’ the Doctor told her as they walked towards it.
‘Historical truth. This is a brand-new nation. At the moment, the people here still think, act, and speak like the English and the Dutch. They don’t have a culture to call their own.
America hasn’t decided yet whether it’s a nation of philosophers or a nation of barbarians.’
‘Yeah, well, I vote barbarians.’
He frowned. ‘It’s never that simple. Soon, the Civil War will come. The guidelines of the society will be laid down, for better or worse, and everyone will know how they’re supposed to behave. The philosophers will act like philosophers. The barbarians will act like barbarians. Until then...’
He trailed off, and shrugged.
The glade at the bottom of the slope was unremarkable, a crater-like circle of trees carpeted by autumn’s leftovers. The moon was bright enough to illuminate the layer of dampened frost on the ground, interrupted only by the dark outline of a wooden-panelled police box.
At the time, Roz thought nothing of the way the Doctor paused before he inserted the TARDIS key into the lock, nor of the strange patterns the rainwater made as it trickled down the surface of the door. It was only when he thrust the key into place that she noticed anything.
The lock split wide open. He removed the key, and the lock sealed itself together again. Roz froze.
‘That’s not natural,